“How’s your pregnancy going?”

My first thought is, do they want the honest answer or not? I think that’s a pretty common thought for most any question that’s asked in passing, right? I mean, even a simple “how are you?” can be difficult to answer depending on the season you’re in, though completely well-intentioned. But here’s my super convoluted answer:

This pregnancy, like all of my pregnancies, has been difficult physically. This pregnancy, unlike my previous pregnancies, has been difficult emotionally. Am I grateful to be pregnant? Absolutely! More than anything though I just hope and pray to hold a healthy baby in my arms in December. Like any loss, you can empathize with it, but pregnancy after miscarriage is impossible to understand unless you’ve been there.

First of all, there’s the trying or desire to get pregnant after loss that is hard to navigate. Will I be able to do this? That sounds like a basic question, but just like the rest of this there are so many layers to it. You fear that this could be a pattern. That the brokenheartedness that you’ve experienced could happen again. Because the truth you now know is that it can happen because it does and it did happen… to you. And can I handle that? The naivety of it all is gone. The other part of this is, can I move on from the baby I lost and love again? You almost feel like a bad Mom or incredibly insensitive parent to even want another baby. But here’s the deepest truth tangled in all of this, the Enemy feeds off of these questions and the doubting. The greatest reality that I found when I just kept pressing in spite of was that God is bigger. Hallelujah for that! The will I and the can I questions were answered with a resounding, “Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'” Well, ok, then… 

The luster of lost things is there, the concern over every bizarre physical change, and the fight to find joy and peace in the midst of naivety lost are all real things. Greater still though is the realization of the truth that God is bigger. There is peace that comes when faced with the reality that I have totally lost control of this. In fact, I never had control to begin with and I never will. It’s good to lose it all. He has known this all along, and I’m just now starting to figure it out. It is good to confront emotional turmoil and physical inability with a faith that He works all things for good. And He does… and He always will…